


When The Lights Are Off

by storybycorey



Series: When The Lights Are Off [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cunnilingus, Dubious Consent, F/M, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 08:53:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18869893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storybycorey/pseuds/storybycorey
Summary: She could’ve guessed he’d come.  Cases like this hurt; they make him needy.  And seeing Mulder needy makes her needy, too. Maybe that’s why she kicked off the bedsheets, why the adjoining door was ajar.(warning: a bit dubcon)





	When The Lights Are Off

It’s not the chill that wakes her, late in her bed on a Thursday night.  In fact, she may have even kicked off the bedsheets herself.  Roadside motel rooms on a bureau budget are always too hot or too cold or some other nonsensical mix between.

It’s not the smell of him either, heady and male—especially in the evenings, when his deodorant’s worn thin and the hours of the day still cling to his skin.  She’s sat until the wee hours of the morning in a Ford Taurus with him often enough to recognize it.  

It’s not the sound of his breaths.  Or the rustle as he slips through their adjoining door.  Or the soft grunt that falls from his lips when he sees the way her pajama top has unbuttoned itself right there between her breasts.

No, what finally wakes her is his fingertips, laid still at the sharpest angle of her hipbone, the spot she bangs against her bathroom countertop sometimes when she’s not paying attention.

She doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t speak.  She doesn’t ask _again, Mulder?_ or _what does this mean?_ or _why do you only come when the lights are off?_ There are unspoken rules to this game they play.

It was rough today—this whole week, this case.  Missing girls and dead girls and too many girls that were almost a girl with dark hair and braids and a brother who can’t let go.

She could’ve guessed he’d come.  Cases like this hurt; they make him needy.  And seeing Mulder needy makes her needy, too. Maybe that’s why she kicked off the bedsheets, why the adjoining door was ajar.

Why she doesn’t make a sound when his fingers first lay at her hip.

The air is cool against her tummy, even cooler against her breasts as he slides buttons silently through their holes.  She wills her body not to shiver. The satin of her top pools softly at her sides.  

She lifts her pelvis, barely, not enough to be obvious, but enough to make it easier as he eases the pants down her legs.  Her heartbeat thuds in her ears.  She concentrates on slowing her breaths, on not licking her lips, on keeping herself from getting… _wet_.  It doesn’t help.  

He likes to look, that’s all.   _That’s all_ , she tells herself.  And maybe she should be offended, or disgusted, or maybe she should’ve stopped it the very first time.  Or the second time.  Or any of the times.  

But the secret is _she likes it, too_.  She likes knowing she can him give this one thing when there are so many other things she can’t give. She likes the feeling of his eyes on her skin. She likes the way her blood rushes through her veins, the way his breaths go from fast to slower to slow before he slips back through the door.  

She likes how exquisitely hard she comes after he’s gone.

Sometimes she wonders whether it’s not a game at all.  Whether he even knows what he’s doing. Charlie suffered somnambulism as a boy. He used to eat watermelon in the middle of the night, spit out the seeds into her mother’s favorite flower vase.

They don’t talk about his visits, the way he looks at her body while she pretends to be asleep. But he has trouble looking her in the eye the next day, and she has trouble standing too closely to him in the elevator, staring too longingly at his forearms while he feeds slides into a rented projector down in the basement office.

His weight dips down the edge of the bed.  There’s the soft swish of her pajama pants slipping to the floor.  There’s her heart, pounding. If she listens closely enough, she can hear the television on in his room, the telltale sounds of moaning. They found another dead body today.

When he comes to her like this, late at night in the middle of a difficult case, she sometimes thinks of New Year’s Eve, of his lips coming closer and closer before landing on hers. She sometimes thinks of telling him _the world won’t end now either, if you want to do more than just look_.

His breaths are fast and the heat from his body hovers near her right shin.  Her own skin feels damp, flushed, despite the chill from the air conditioner that’s too cold, too hot, never just right.

She wishes he’d touch her. Just once.  She’s terrified he’ll touch her.  More than once.

There’s a pulse now between her legs, even though she tries for there not to be one.  She concentrates on not rolling her hips. She hasn’t opened her eyes, but his scent is so strong, she can tell he’s not wearing the shirt he wore when he bade her goodnight. Her nipples tighten. She grows even wetter.

He’s still, and his breathing, instead of slowing down, seems only to be growing faster, harsher. She imagines those breaths against her neck, against the small of her back, against her inner thighs, and fights back a moan.

Something tonight is different.

A car spits gravel in the parking lot outside and stops a few doors away.  Drunken laughter muffles its way through the window.

Mulder’s fingertips land gently at her knees.  Nudge.

She sucks in a breath.

More muffled laughter, then a door slamming off in the distance.

She doesn’t open her eyes, she doesn’t resist, she doesn’t attempt to adjust the thermostat on this unpredictable motel air conditioner of a relationship they have.

What she does is she spreads her legs for him.  What she does is she tries not to tremble as he breathes her name, so quietly she may or may not have imagined it.

There’s another dip in the bed, this time between her ankles.  

There’s the world, not ending.

The heat comes off him in waves, hits her again somewhere near the insides of her knees.  Her lips part, breaths turned ragged despite her desperate attempts to control them.  There are days when she swears it could work, when slipping from friends to lovers seems the only plausible progression between the two of them.  

A finger traces a path up her inner thigh, and she holds her breath, the hotel sheet growing wet beneath her.  

He grunts, just barely. Her inner muscles twitch.

She aches to touch him, to arch her back and roll her hips, to pull his heavy weight atop her and hold him there. But there are dead girls out there and even more dying, and there’s the possibility of ruining whatever this is that they have, and there’s his breath between her legs and his thumbs spreading her apart and his tongue his tongue his tongue—

Her fingers grip tightly at the sheets; her head tips back against the pillow. She fights to keep from moaning his name, but he doesn’t do the same, the _S_ and the _C_ and the whole jumbled rest of it slipping sloppily from his mouth to her pussy. She’s thought of him doing this since close to the beginning, watching his tongue roll around sunflower seeds instead of her clit.  

He’s gentle, so gentle. It’s almost more than she can take, the torturous slip and slide of his tongue. She turns her head against the pillow, hopes that 200 thread count cotton will keep the moans from crawling their way out her throat. It’s the hardest thing she’s ever done, keep quiet with his mouth on her like this. His hands work beneath her thighs to lift her even closer, and she can’t help herself—she threads four fingertips and a thumb through his hair.

He hums as he tastes her, is as obsessively thorough as she’d expect him to be.  He caresses her thighs with fingers that earlier helped her off with her coat. He breathes against her flesh with a mouth that yesterday whispered theories into her ear.   Her fingers clench, unclench, then clench once again.  

When she’s imagined this in the past, it was never like this, never in the dead of night with her eyes squeezed shut, never surrounded by such an unsettling silence, never in a second-rate motel room while neither of them even acknowledge what’s happening. He sucks on her clit and she tries not to scream.

It takes all she has not to shove herself against him, not to thrust into his mouth and take what she knows he can give.  She pulls her lip between her teeth to keep from going insane.  He’s going to make her come, she can feel it.  She’s not sure whether to laugh or to cry at the absurdity of that.

His thumb works its way around to her clit.  His tongue delves deep, deep inside.  Her fingers tighten in his hair, and the pressure—it builds, it builds, it builds. He bought her a muffin yesterday, he opened her car door.  He’s driven thousands of miles, typed hundreds of reports, picked up dozens and dozens of large veggie pizzas.  And yet somehow, every single one of those things feels more intimate than his mouth where it is, doing the things it’s doing, right now.

Another circle around her clit, another flicker of his tongue, and she explodes.  “Oh fuck,” she gasps, her hips lifting, muscles contracting, fingers clenching.  A soft whine slips out before she can turn to the pillow.

He licks her clean and her hand falls limply back to the sheet.  His weight drags off the end of the bed only to return a few seconds later. She realizes he’s slipping her pajama pants back onto her legs.  She’d laugh if she weren’t in shock.   When he closes her top back over her chest, she flinches, nipples still too sensitive from touches they never received.

Seconds pass and the adjoining door clicks shut.  She hasn’t opened her eyes since last night at ten o’clock, when she first lied down to sleep.

The world didn’t end—she was right about that. She’s not sure what it did though.

She doesn’t bother rebuttoning her top, doesn’t adjust the twisted way he pulled up her bottoms. She tries to ignore the lingering pulse between her legs as she falls back asleep.


End file.
